


your love is (like) friendly fire

by ViolettaValery



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Antar, Handprints, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Interstellar War, M/M, Space Royalty, torture mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-21 15:23:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21077123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViolettaValery/pseuds/ViolettaValery
Summary: Antar offers mercy in return for Earth’s surrender, on one condition: Jesse Manes’ youngest son.





	your love is (like) friendly fire

Antar offers mercy in return for Earth’s surrender, on one condition: Jesse Manes’ youngest son.

In the end, mercy for humanity from a race of monsters matters more to Manes than the life of his most hated child. With Earth’s forces depleted and the war all but lost, the agreement is made.

That’s how Alex finds himself standing by his father’s side, dressed in crisp dress blues and a chest of commendations as Jesse performs the role of heartbroken father.

“It pains me in ways I cannot begin to describe,” he says to a circle of cameras, and Alex has to mask his snort. “I do not know why this is what they asked for. Revenge for my leadership in this war, perhaps, or for his bravery in it.” (Alex thinks this might be the first time his father has called him brave) “But my son is a hero, who has agreed to uphold our family’s long tradition of sacrifice for the greater good. One life, against billions.”

Only one of his brothers protested the trade.

_“He is your son!” Hunter shouted. “You can’t just, what, give him away to be tortured and killed? They are monsters!”_

_“It’s all right,” he reassured his brother. “Dad’s right. It’s one life against billions. There’s no other choice.” _

_Hunter stared him incredulously, lost for words. But Alex only cared about his father’s fleeting look of approval, and he hated it. _

Now, with cameras trained on them, he receives the first hug he’s ever had from his father.

“Goodbye, dad,” he says quietly.

“Alex,” he acknowledges. “Make me proud.”

_Don’t show weakness when they torture you, _he means. _Don’t beg when they grant you the mercy of death. _

Alex is under no illusions about what his father thinks he’s sending him off to.

He nods and holds out his hands, and the Antarians sent to collect him bind his wrists and escort him aboard the ship.

On Antar, the guards laugh as they drag him along to Rath’s chambers. “You’re in for a treat,” one says gleefully. “He’s wanted you for a while. I’m sure he’ll _enjoy _himself.”

The second guard snickers as they shove him inside.

Now, Alex sits on the edge of an armchair in the impossibly vast, luxurious chambers and waits, resigned, for Michael – for _Rath. _

That was a shock to find out. Three years into a war Antar had declared on humanity, he woke up in a hospital without a leg. The news was on, a television screen broadcasting a message from Rath, asking for Earth’s surrender. It was the first time Earth had a glimpse of Antar’s fearsome ruler.

It was Michael, _his _Michael, and Alex’s first thought was that he was still alive. That he was _safe. _

Then he remembered that it was Rath who had declared war in the first place.

Now, he waits for Rath and whatever he will inflict on Alex.

Oh, there won’t be torture or death, that he knows. Michael had never been cruel, and he doesn’t think that has changed, not even after years of war. Even if the boy who had once protected him had become Rath, he’d fought a just war, avoiding civilian targets, exchanging prisoners-of-war, unharmed, untortured.

But Michael declared that very war in his fury at humanity, and Alex harbors no illusions that any of Michael’s love for him remains. He knows that Michael must regret that love, now, regret protecting Alex and their first night together.

No, that love has been replaced by hate, and anger, and he deserves every ounce of it for breaking Michael’s heart. For running off, too cowardly to even look him in the face and apologize after getting his hand and his dreams shattered. He’d wanted to win battles, then, and he’d left behind the one he lost with nothing more than a note with the words _I’m sorry, goodbye. _So if he is here, it is only to receive his just deserts from Michael’s lips.

Perhaps Michael will scream and throw things, flinging unrestrained fury at Alex. Or perhaps Michael will cut him with cold, calculating words. _I hate you. You take after your dad now. Finally, a real Manes man. _

To think of Michael saying such things makes him taste bile at the back of his throat, but Alex will accept it, gladly, because it is a fair exchange.

Perhaps he’ll even say _I never loved you. It meant nothing, _while Alex’s heart still beats for Michael. But he could live through that, too, even if it’s some kind of half-life, never again knowing what it’s like to love and be loved.

But the one thing he doesn’t think he could survive is Michael telling him he wished he'd never kissed him in the museum. Michael can hate him and despise him, hurl insults and regret their every touch, so long as he doesn’t regret that one perfect moment when Alex's heart soared and he'd felt complete and valuable and had known that nothing about him was wrong, not when it led to the tangle of soft curls under his string-calloused fingers and chapped lips on his own.

He rises when the door opens. He wants to face Michael stoically, but that flies out the window the second Alex’s gaze falls on him.

Michael looks as beautiful as ever. He’s grown from a boy into a man, his innocent hope replaced with a confident posture and a self-assured expression. He wears Antarian military garb, armor and a crimson cloak that falls to the ground, coupled with high boots - every inch the commander, but his eyes are still warm. They have none of the hate and fury Alex expects; they’re the beloved hazel eyes he’d gotten lost in, and Alex can’t help the way his heart speeds up as a love he has no right to flares to full, blazing life in his chest.

Michael strides toward him intently and he braces himself.

Michael sweeps him into a tight hug and whispers, “you’re here, you’re safe” into his hair, and he stands stiff as a board as his brain careens wildly at the unexpected gesture.

“I’m here,” he agrees when Michael pulls away. Michael flicks his wrist, and Alex’s manacles fall to the ground. Alex can’t entirely suppress his surprised flinch, and Michael frowns.

He has so much more power than Alex thought, at his fingertips quicker than a thought.

“I’m here,” he hurries to repeat, lest Michael think he’s shying away from the punishment he’s well aware he deserves. “You can have justice for what I did to you. I’ll accept whatever you have to say to me. Though you already got a start on balancing the scales,” he adds, eyeing Michael’s hand. Still broken, he notices, despite all of Antar’s technology. “A limb for a limb.”

“What?” Michael asks, clearly startled.

Alex leans down and taps his leg.

He doesn’t expect the way Michael looks sick, his expression turning horrified as he falls to his knees with a breathless “No.”

“I’m sorry,” he babbles. “I’m sorry, Alex. I’m so sorry.”

Alex blinks at him dully.

“It’s fine,” he says wearily. “It’s just.”

“It’s not fine!” Michael screams, and for the first time, Alex comes face to face with the alien known as _Rath._

_That, _at least, finally seems right, Michael screaming at him, and he accepts the words head-on like a punch until Michael screams “I went to war so I could find you and protect you, Alex. It’s not fine!”

“What?” he asks helplessly. “Why would you do that?”

“You have to ask that?” Rath shouts at him. “Because I love you!”

The ground dances beneath his feat, and Alex stumbles backwards until he’s sitting down again.

“What?” he says again.

“I love you,” Rath repeats. “There, I said it. And I will again. I love you.”

“No,” Alex insists, floundering desperately. “No, you hate me.”

“I was furious with you, at first,” Michael admits. “You left. But it’s been years, Alex. I missed you. I don’t want to punish you. I just want you back.”

He sounds so sincere, hazel eyes wide and guileless. Nothing at all like an alien conqueror, and everything like his Michael.

Alex gazes down at him, still on his knees.

Michael has only ever knelt for him once, but it had turned his world topsy-turvy when he did. It’s no different now.

Michael takes Alex’s hand, thumbs rubbing gently where the manacles pressed into his skin.

He’s forgotten just how gently Michael can touch him.

“Could you still want me, after everything?” Michael asks softly.

Alex gazes down at Michael as his soul screams that he doesn’t deserve him. But after everything, he owes Michael honesty, at least, even if he must rip himself open to do it.

“Yes,” he says. “I never stopped.”

Let Michael do with that what he will.

But Michael just gazes at him, need and longing in those still-familiar eyes, and Alex can’t help but respond in kind; he knows his own expression reflects Michael’s.

Then Michael is on him, and he forgets everything in the meeting of their lips, a collision that could create universes.

After that, they stumble toward the bed until the back of Alex’s knees hit it and he falls unceremoniously, Michael atop him. They peel each other’s clothes off hurriedly, hungrily latching onto every inch of uncovered skin with hands and mouths. Even after years, they still fit together perfectly, setting each other alight with every touch. Their bodies remember reach other like they’ve never parted.

Then Michael tugs his pants off, revealing the prosthetic, and the heat flares out.

Tentatively, Michael reaches out to remove the artificial limb, his clever engineer’s brain figuring it out swiftly. Alex lets him, but when he pulls it off to reveal his stump, he looks ill.

“I know,” Alex reassures him. “it’s not a pleasant sight.”

“What?” Michael’s brows drew together in confusion, then a frown. “No, Alex, it’s not that,” he protests quickly. “It doesn’t disgust me. It’s just – it’s my fault.”

“You didn’t – “

“I started the war you got hurt in,” Michael insists. “It’s my fault you lost part of yourself. Let me try to fix it. Please.”

“How?” he asks, because there’s no way to _fix _him.

“I can heal,” Michael says, and Alex stares. “Alien, remember?”

As if he could ever forget.

He nods.

Michael places a hand on his leg and concentrates, his face contorting into what looks like pain while several lights blow out around them. Alex feels heat, and something like an electric charge against his skin, but nothing more.

Michael collapses atop him, winded.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m not strong enough.”

And Alex feels the echo of that despair inside himself. Glancing down, he sees a glittering handprint on his stump, and then he’s hit with a flood of memories. Michael’s love for him flares inside him, bright and true, constant through everything –

After the toolshed, Michael tries to chase after him after he leaves a note on Michael’s windshield, allowing him a glimpse so Michael at least knows he isn’t dead after his father dragged him off to beat him. But Michael’s not quick enough, and Alex disappears for what Michael will later learn is the Air Force, and nobody will tell him where Alex went, and he can find no trace, no matter how hard he looks -

_(His father pulled strings to ship him off to Basic immediately, and he was glad, because now he could learn to fight battles and protect the people he loves the way he couldn’t protect Michael)_

Days after Alex disappears, Michael’s family comes to take him away; the timing is outright miraculous, that right after he loses the only home he’s ever known, he’s offered another one, on a planet where each step, each breath, ignite muscle memory.

But despite having a place he _fits, _he cannot forget Alex, perhaps because he fits on Antar now the way he fitted into Alex’s arms like they were the place he’d been born to be. Alex was his one bright light, the shining hope that there might be a place for him among the humans who had done nothing but cast him out. Until Alex leaves, and Michael is left with nothing but despair that they have taken from him the one thing that mattered the most, the one thing he couldn’t protect.

_(No, no, it was you I couldn’t protect)_

Years pass, and as that despair transforms into fury, Rath slowly awakens within Michael. But where Michael’s fury simmered quietly beneath layers of guilt and self-hate, Rath’s is a self-righteous thing. He did not deserve what humanity inflicted upon him, and humanity will pay. Michael never allowed his hand to be healed despite Antar’s miraculous technology, keeping it as a reminder that humanity has nothing to redeem it, and now Rath uses it to spur Antarians into a rage at the race that so mistreated him. He declares war, intent on subjugating the people who left him no other place on Earth than as its conqueror, and his soldiers rejoice at the opportunity to avenge their righteous commander.But he forbids civilian targets, because he refuses to fail to protect Alex a second time.

_(Alex feels a bitter amusement at that, for if that isn’t irony, then what is?) _

And then, Earth conquered and helpless would give him Alex. Michael would be free to find him and take him away and protect him, where no one would be able to touch him again. Alex would be his.

_If he chooses, _Michael’s voice whispers in Rath’s mind.

_He’s ours, _Rath whispers in answer. _He will always be ours. _

_(He feels another flame, hotter and more vicious. Where Michael’s love for him burns with a slow, constant heat, Rath’s love is fury, flames whipped by the wind but refusing to extinguish themselves, spreading to devour everything in their path)_

Years into the war, intelligence reports come, mentioning key figures in Earth’s war effort. Jesse Manes, and his four sons.

“_Four_?” Michael asks, incredulous, and that is how he learns that Alex is fighting the war he started. He would have lost his mind at the knowledge, then, if Rath didn’t roar to life from where he hid inside Michael, offering solutions: pulling back with the insistence that this war is to be won with precision rather than brute force, a command given to every soldier that Rath wants Manes and every one of his sons, _alive, _whatever the cost, because they are key, the knowledge they hold in their minds crucial to Antar’s victory. 

(_I _was_ key to the war effort. The war only lasted this long because of my codebreaking and hacking, until I lost a leg and Antar had the opening to press their advantage and demand surrender_)

And Antar presses that advantage. When Earth’s surrenders, no one blinks when Rath demands one of Earth’s war heroes in exchange for mercy. Rath doesn’t care how it looks or what is whispered, because this is the way to get Alex back, and Alex will understand.

_(Alex wants to laugh at that, too, because he’d expected the worst, sitting there, waiting for Michael, and he hears Michael’s mournful sound at that thought_).

Alex surfaces, gasping for air. Michael looks at him guiltily.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers again, and Alex feels the tears falling onto his stomach from Michael’s bowed head. “I’m sorry, I never wanted to hurt you, I never wanted you to fear me.”

Alex pulls him close, tucks Michael’s head into his chin and runs his hands through Michael’s hair. He still remembers how to do it gently, without snagging his fingers on the curls.

“I’m here,” Alex soothes. “I’m safe. I was never afraid of you, and I’m never leaving you again.”

Michael gives a gut-wrenching sob, and Alex holds him even tighter.

He doesn’t say _it’s all right, _because it’s not.

Perhaps neither of them could have ever managed _all right._ But maybe, he thinks, this is the best both of them could do with the cards dealt to them. With the fear and shame beaten into him by his father, the rage and abandonment that have been Michael’s constant companions. Perhaps they couldn’t have gotten here without a war, and broken bones, and lost limbs.

But they still have each other, after everything. 

They stay wrapped up in each other, tangled together like a Gordian knot. Michael drops soft kisses onto his chest (he kisses every scar after spilling tears on it), his neck, his face, his hands, whispering “I love you” and “I’ll protect you” and “I’ll never hurt you.” Alex basks in the adoration he hasn’t allowed himself to hope still exists. He soaks in the warmth of Michael’s too-hot skin (so much hotter than humans because he is an alien, he understands now), and tastes his lips again, and murmurs his own “I love you, I never stopped, it was always only you.”

The next morning, the guards stare when Alex leaves Rath’s chambers seemingly unharmed. He wonders what, exactly, they expected to see.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, uh, so I just had this offhand idea about Alex waiting in "Rath's" chambers as his prize while everybody thinks he's there to be tortured and killed, but Alex knows why he's _really_ here, and it's because Michael is angry at him because of their history. And I just threw it out as a thought, and then a bunch of amazing people helped me develop it (shoutout to ninswhimsy and alexanderlightweight) and went "so you're writing this, right??" And then I kind of had to. So, yeah, thanks, assholes. I had no intent of this even being a thing. 
> 
> Thank you also to allthehearteyes for beta-ing, validation, and support. The paragraph "but the one thing he doesn't think he could survive" was generously lent to me by alexanderlightweight (seriously, what would my fic be without you?) All the love. <3 
> 
> As a final note, the tenses in this fic drove me nuts. There's a lot of flashbacks, and at a certain point I had a near-meltdown as I tried to figure out whether I could have a flashback in the present tense, so...idk. I think it works, but if there's any lines that sound _off_ or if there's something you don't think is working, please tell me. I really wanted to play with non-linear narrative here and try to create some suspense out of what was originally a relatively straight-forward story, so I'm curious as to whether it worked and at what point in the story you realized that Malex have a history and that this won't be their first meeting.


End file.
